One difficult to identify form of verbal abuse is when someone makes public jokes about you at your expense. The feelings you could experience as a result of this are shame, humiliation, anger, and confusion. Humor is an effective mask should anyone choose to confront the inconsiderate behavior. They can always respond with, “I’m just kidding. Don’t take it so seriously.” Don’t let such a response fool you. Anyone who responds like this simply doesn’t want to be held accountable for the hurt that their words caused. A person who truly cares about you and knows how to love in a healthy way will always listen when you need to talk about something they said or did that hurt you. They’ll believe you. They don’t want to hurt you. A person engaged in verbal abuse on the other hand will often attempt to convince you that you’re wrong and that what they said wasn’t actually that bad (Gordon, 2022).

Because verbal abuse doesn’t leave any visible wounds or bruises, it can be easy to overlook or convince ourselves that it isn’t so bad. But it is. Some of the long term effects of verbal abuse include chronic stress, low self-esteem, depression, anxiety, PTSD, social isolation, and substance use (Gordon, 2022). If you think you might be experiencing verbal abuse from someone in your life, please reach out and talk about it. No one deserves to be verbally abused. Ever.

I write about my high school experience light-heartedly, but drugs are something to take seriously. They can impact every aspect of our mental and physical state. I’ll talk about that, but first, let’s talk about categories of drugs. There are 3 categories based on their effect: stimulants, depressants, and hallucinogens (Types of drugs, 2021).